ArmenaMarderosian

MARDEROSIAN, ARMENA PEARL January 1, 1949 - November 3, 2012 Armena Marderosian, wife of Ronald Grigor Suny and mother of Grikor Martiros Suni (1978-1980), Sevan Siranoush Suni, and Anoush Tamar Suni, died peacefully at home after struggling for seven and a half months with breast cancer. Armena was a renowned piano teacher, who for forty years taught students and other teachers by the Suzuki method. She was a graduate of Oberlin College and a member of the International Suzuki Association. Her many articles appeared in piano teaching journals. Her crowning achievement was the foundation and direction of the Suni Project: Music Preservation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and publishing of the music and writings of the Armenian ethnomusicologist and composer, Grikor Mirzaian Suni (1876-1939), her husband's grandfather www.suniproject.org. Armena grew up in the loving family of Diran and Vanouhi Mardirossian with her older sister, Arax, and brother, Ara. Born in Providence, RI, she moved with her family to the suburban Philadelphia town of Fairless Hills and graduated from Pennsbury High School in 1966. As a teenager, she performed at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and auditioned at Carnegie Hall in New York. She entered the Oberlin Conservatory of Music to study piano but soon transferred to the college as her interests broadened to history, political science, literature, and anthropology. But even after her graduation in 1970, she continued to study piano pedagogy and ultimately settled with whole-hearted conviction upon the Suzuki method to which she dedicated her entire life. She married Oberlin professor of history, Ron Suny, on August 14, 1971, and they began a life together that featured family, travel, and a deep intellectual companionship. Armena became strongly interested in nutrition and health, becoming first a vegetarian, then a vegan, and finally a raw food vegan. Armena, in the words of a friend, was a "sovereign woman," who walked her own distinct path. She had no enemies and was loved deeply by hundreds of friends and relatives. She is survived by her husband, Ronald Suny, the Charles Tilly, Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago; her daughters, Sevan Suni, PhD in biology from Stanford University and currently the Darwin Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Anoush Suni, a doctoral student in anthropology at UCLA who received her master's degree at Sabanci University, Istanbul; her sister Arax Kendikian; and her brother, Ara Marderosian. The most fitting memorial to Armena is the Suni Project, and contributions may be made in lieu of flowers to THE SUNI PROJECT, 1723 Wells Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-3601. Commemorations of Armena's life will be held in December in Ann Arbor and in Philadelphia.